This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
8am: Breakfast at Mercado Municipal
At the domed Beaux Arts-style Mercado Municipal, kiosks open from 6am to hawk produce such as salt-cod, spices and deep-fried buns including the local meat-stuffed, teardrop-shaped coxinhas. Paulistanos elbow their way to Bar do Mané on the mezzanine for a pingado: espresso with just a drop of milk. Try the bar’s piping-hot cheese-filled pastel pastries, or the legendary sweet versions, oozing guava or fried caramelised banana.
Mercado Municipal de São Paulo is the city’s biggest public market; open from 6am.
Photograph by André Klotz
9am: Art in the park at Pinacoteca Museum
Every street surrounding the market has a different retail theme: eyeglasses, shoes, electronics. When the area gets busy, head to Jardim da Luz, 20 minutes away on foot. Stroll amid the lush greenery before heading to the historic rose-brick Pinacoteca museum, which opens at 10am by the eastern gate. Clever roof lights and floating steel bridges were added by Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes de la Rocha in the 1990s. It spotlights contemporary stars such as Sonia Gomes — and a Picasso once stolen in a famous heist.
12pm: Window shopping on Oscar Freire street
From Luz Station, a homage to London’s Houses of Parliament, the Linha 4 Metro runs to Oscar Freire Station — the surrounding streets are a hub for the city’s swishest retail. Start at Pinga for conceptual Brazilian fashion by designers like Ão and Vanda Jacintho. Two streets over is Alameda Gabriel Monteiro da Silva, a road where it’s hard to distinguish between lavish minimalist residences and lavish minimalist boutiques — like Dpot, a low-slung villa showcasing Brazilian rosewood furniture.
2pm: Lunch at Jiquitaia
Jiquitaia is a kind of pepper ground by Baniwa Indians in the Amazon. It’s sprinkled across the menu at eponymous restaurant Jiquitaia, in the Paraíso neighbourhood, and emerges memorably in cocktails such as the house bloody mary. Served in a homely dining room, the whole barbecued fish is best for sharing. It’s filleted at the table to preserve its crispy, spicy skin, and presented with cassava porridge and fragrant rice. The tangy okra and shrimp stew has a vegetarian alternative.
4pm: Discover the Museu Afro Brasil
Across the other side of Paraíso is the impressive granite Monumento às Bandeiras. This was crafted by the legendary Italian-Brazilian sculptor Victor Brecheret to recognise the native Brazillians and enslaved people who toiled for Portuguese colonisers exploring Brazil’s interior. The history lesson continues at Museu Afro Brasil, in Ibirapuera Park. The foyer is dedicated to museum founder Emanoel Araújo, also a noted sculptor famed for designing massive totems in pleated-steel. The artefacts upstairs include the partial reconstruction of a slave ship and modern paintings and sculpture from some of Brazil’s 100 million African descendants.
5pm: Stroll around Ibirapuera Park
Most buildings in Ibirapuera Park — Museu Afro Brazil included — were designed by Brazil’s most illustrious architect, Oscar Niemeyer. The most photographed might be the organic dome of the 1951 Oca, an exhibition hall shaped like an ancient native Brazilian dwelling. But Niemeyer’s pyramidal Auditório Ibirapuera deserves kudos. Spend some time admiring this structure, with its vermilion canopy that cantilevers over the entrance like a tongue, and the lashes of red swooping around the foyer. The auditorium seats a few hundred indoors, but the stage opens fully at the rear, to a vast lawn accommodating 15,000.
The historic rose-brick Pinacoteca museum is an oasis amid the rush of the city.
Photograph by André Klotz
7pm: Dinner and Music at Orfeu
At night, São Paulo’s artiest residents spill out of República Metro to the cafes and bars flanking Avenida Ipiranga. Orfeu is the buzziest and most colourful. It can be found on a cordoned-off pedestrian alley plastered with groovy tilework — known as ‘Portuguese pavement’ and which originated in Lisbon in the 19th century. By evening, couples huddle over risotto balls and deep-fried diced tapioca on the second-storey balcony. Back outside, you can hear Arrocha funk, with its slow and gritty Reggaetón-like drums, blaring out of the open windows while revellers — all long hair, scant clothing and body ink — clink caipirinhas on the pavement.
10pm: Late night munchies at Estadão
Estadão is the place to go for a late-night snack in São Paulo. Born as a lunch counter for employees of the Estadão newspaper, it’s years since the journal and its staff moved on but the cafe is more popular than ever. Part of the appeal is in the original tiled decor, accessorised with hanging salamis and citrus fruit — and that it remains reliably open 24/7. You’re on to a winner with most of the menu, but nobody can deny the booze-absorbing power of the Tradicional — thick chunks of roast pork topped with fried cabbage on an old-fashioned Kaiser roll. Drizzle liberally with the house chilli oil.
Published in the April 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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